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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292760">Mass Hysteria</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrivaled_tapestry/pseuds/unrivaled_tapestry'>unrivaled_tapestry</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Adventure Zone (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, fairly graphic descriptions of character deaths that don't actually happen, humans are sometimes very bad, prophesies are like intrusive thoughts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:22:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,059</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292760</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrivaled_tapestry/pseuds/unrivaled_tapestry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Okay. Fine. I— I don’t— I don’t see any futures where I’m being drawn and quartered quite yet, so I suppose I can take your word for it, Aubrey."</p>
<p>It's no secret that Indrid hasn't always been able to keep his true form under wraps.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mass Hysteria</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey there! I've never written a TAZ fic before, and this little character/world study has been sitting on my GDrive for a while. I dusted it off earlier, saw that I actually quite liked it, even though it's halfway between a drabble and a more proper fic.</p>
<p>I want to clarify that there is no actual character death here, but it does involve fairly graphic depictions of Indrid seeing futures where people react very badly to his identity being discovered..</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He got a smudge on his glasses while walking in the late summer, after making his way down to Florida, in the hopes that it might be more amenable to his physiology. The hot sun glared down, and although he didn't need much sleep, a nap sounded great. Sinking into the heat, in perfect comfort, sounded nice after the harsh winter he'd weathered in Illinois, where he finally gave in and rented a cabin with a fireplace. He'd spent the winter shivering in his blanket, huddled near it and seeing every possible winter-related death through his chills.</p>
<p>But now he was down south, and enjoyed the way the heat radiated up from the pavement, beat down from the sky, and filled him up.</p>
<p>Reaching up, he took off his glasses, tried to rub the smudge out with his fingers.</p>
<p>Someone gasped. High and fast enough to gulp air into  the stomach.</p>
<p>He glanced around. A little girl stood staring at him. Her mouth was open, and her forgotten ice cream plopped onto the ground from her shaking hand.</p>
<p>Indrid replaced his glasses. Breath quickening, he turned on his heels, and walked quickly down the street. He buried his hands in his pockets, and instinctively slumped his shoulders.</p>
<p>Behind him, a child screamed.</p>
<p>
  <i>He stays long enough to sell his truck, and that's not fast enough. When he goes to the location where he’s supposed to meet the buyer, he’s greeted by a shaking circle of humans. They hold guns and make demands, as humans often do. One of them tells him they know what he is. With his hands raised, he slowly opens his driver’s side door.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>In most timelines, he has the chance to take off his glasses and escape on his wings. However, in a handful of them, when he reaches up to take off his glasses, one or another of the people holding guns panics and opens fire. This causes all of the others to open fire, except the ones that have their safety on, which in some realities is two of them, and in others is three. He is not the only one who dies.</i>
</p>
<p>He left town that night, instead.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Even back in Sylvain, libations weren't his favorite pasttime. Still, sometimes he'd slink out to the local bar to see if he could catch any scents. The sports bar with its bright neon signs and five TVs—all emitting heat—became his go-to. He trudged there a couple nights a week, and worked on a beer while he took notes.</p>
<p>A sharp signal came from a few minutes out. There was a couple out behind the bar. A pair of men go out to harass them. There is a scuffle. In several possible realities, at least one person winds up dead. After waiting 30 seconds, Indrid saw the Heath brothers exchange some heated words, and snaked their way through the crowd towards the back exit. After a moment's deliberation, he followed.</p>
<p>When he stepped outside to interrupt, the taller of the two punched him, hard in the face. It didn't hurt—it barely even budged him. His head moved to the side, but the impact stopped there.</p>
<p>What was a scuffle had four people looking at him instead of fighting each other. The couple ran, one stumbling after the other.</p>
<p>Glancing down, Indrid saw the remains of his glasses on the ground. One of the arms bent awkwardly to the right, and the right lens was fragmented across the pavement.</p>
<p>
  <i>His spinal column is a weakness he shares with most animals, and Jeb from the dairy farm takes advantage of that when he shoots Indrid in the lower back. He drops out of the sky and lands on the ground. There's a crack and a thump, but the small mob doesn't hear bones break as they come running out of the barn armed with hand tools.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Dave from the bank—he works in human resources—beats at Indrid's wings with the flat part of a shovel until one breaks and flaps like a bad prop. A woman named Emily kicks his face, and even from the past the pain from his jaw getting popped out of socket is present. He reaches for them until Lorena from the feed store drives the sharp part of a garden hoe into the back of his neck.</i>
</p>
<p>Indrid came to as two large men screamed and ran away.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He stretched his wings in the warm night air. It's a new moon, and he's found that's the safest. Well, going out in his real body was never safe, really, but some things couldn't be helped. He'd stepped off the metal step of his recently purhcased Winibego, and shuffled off into the woods where he stored his glasses and his shard in the gnarled root of a good tree. They were all second growth—none of them counted as elders, but he thanked it before leaving for his flight.</p>
<p>The wind lapped at his face, and his eyes burned the landscape in reds and greens. Threads of fate, shifting, turning towards and away from him. He thought about going down to the road, and his mind followed a trail to a woman in her car, who was tired. In one version of events she's driving home from school. She got a late start but her parents asked her to wake them when she arrived. Still, her chin dips behind the wheel a couple times.</p>
<p>In the reality where <i>Indrid flies down to the truck to wake her up, he overshoots and lands a little in front of the headlights. It wakes her. He knows this because he hears her scream as the tires squeal. Only she doesn't use her breaks—whether or not that is an accident is not a question the vision answers.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Indrid is pinned to a tree at the hip. She screams, but he knows she regrets what she did because she keeps saying, "Oh God, I'm so sorry."</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It's not often a human cries. Indrid stays in this vision a little longer. She sobs, and eventually he stops moving over the hood of the car.</i>
</p>
<p>He still followed her from a distance to see if she got home safe. She did. Not too surprising, since she only crashed in 1/3rd of the scenarios Indrid saw.</p>
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